@ysascha Yes :-) It's the only photo I currently have from this era. The devices are now so small that it's much harder to take a photo of people using them, especially in this scenario. Phablets far outweigh 10' tablets, so they're now palm-sized.

What often happens these days is the crew members wander around the mall, grab a coffee to go, and use the Internet along the way (the only wifi used to be at Starbucks and Costa Coffee, now there's wi-fi all over the mall...I suspect the cruise ships also now have relatively economical broadband). So yes...it's not the most accurate picture, but I wanted to show the real context and real behaviours. Will hopefully update the photo soon...

All that changed in 2005,
when Taiwanese semiconductor company MediaTek introduced what it called “reference designs” for mobile phones. http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/oskay/3300142950

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/oskay/3300142950 This “cell phone in
a box” concept bundled all the necessary mobile phone components onto a single chip. Manufacturers could customize their chip from a menu of available features, and MediaTek even oﬀered training and development tools such as emulators. camera MP3 music player low power consumption feature phone reference chipset GSM/GPRS pre-integrated software ARM7-EJ 52MHz ultra-low-cost MT6233

Most of these companies clustered
around the electronics and manufacturing hub of Shenzhen in China, but others soon appeared in India, Malaysia, Indonesia... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/oskay/3299338889

MediaTek chips provided most of
the functionality. All companies needed to do was slap on a case, add a bit of branding and develop any product-speciﬁc customizations. Nexian Indonesia circa 2009

Micromax India circa 2009 Some
companies competed solely on price, while others specialized in fun and often eccentric devices designed to suit local needs and fashions....

By late 2007, it was
estimated that these small “white-box”* retailers had captured 10% of global device sales. Source: Wikipedia (Because many of these companies began by copying other products, they were also often referred to as “Shanzhai”, or bandit manufacturers, but this term downplays the presence of many small legitimate companies who designed their own products). not a BlackBerry man in an Obama suit?

Android provided the entire ecosystem
with a unique opportunity to rapidly transition from building low-cost feature phones to low, mid-and eventually high-end smartphones and tablets. circa 2010 one of Spice, India’s ﬁrst Android smartphones

Source: EBay, August 2013 Shanzhai
circa 2013 ...looks like a Nokia Lumia ...looks like Windows Phone OS Some small device makers still chose to copy the look and feel of well known brands... ...built on Android but hey, it’s only £56! ($85)

“...designed by Jack Wong with
the help of 30-plus handcrafted wooden prototypes, followed by 3-D scanning...” Source: Engadget The slick, NFC- enabled Meizu MX3 in 2013...

Other chipset vendors such as
Rockchip, Broadcom, Allwinner and Qualcomm now emulate the MediaTek model, resulting in a veritable explosion of options for manufacturers and consumers. http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/fdecomite/2787670078/

Oﬀ the shelf components and
an open OS have democratized portable computing. There is now huge consumer choice in connected devices reaching almost every price point. http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/designshard/3019335591

At the cheapest price point,
you often ﬁnd “generic” device with an oﬀ-the-shelf chipset, stock Android and barely-branded case. There are tons of these devices for sale throughout Asia, but they haven’t (yet) reached Europe and North America. Screenshot: Tmart oﬀ-the-shelf stock oﬀ-the-shelf

Part of Hongmi’s huge appeal
is its MIUI ROM. A highly customized (and customizable) version of Android. (we’ll have a better look at Android ROMs in a bit...)

In case you’re thinking “Yeah,
whatever...” consider that when the Hongmi went on sale last month, the ﬁrst batch of 100,000 devices sold out in just 90 seconds. (Xiaomi has no shops and until recently, only sold online. This reduces overhead, and enables customers all over China to purchase a device on the very same day).

What we most often purchase
in Europe and North America is some manner of highly customized device built by an established manufacturer. customized customized customized

A new dual screen, dual
SIM (with dual standby) luxury clamshell phone developed by Samsung. The full OS is accessible from back or front. This device is expected to retail for ~£1500 ($2500). serve varied audiences...

The KDDI Infobar range was
designed by famed industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa, and features iida UI, a highly customized version of Android. to diﬀerentiate or leverage fashion their brand Infobar C01 Infobar A01

Open source Android OS also
provides an ideal platform on which to experiment with new interfaces and interactions. Scrolling turns elements into translucent teardrops. iida UI features a modular, widget based interface. There are also lots of platform speciﬁc transitions.

A dual display smartphone developed
by Yota, a Russian broadband operator. The e-paper powered back display can retain an image for weeks, even when the device is powered oﬀ. This feature enables users to completely customize their back case, or use it to store a time-and power- sensitive image such as a map or boarding pass. e-paper with capacitive touch stripe standard multi-touch display FRONT BACK

Source: Quartz, Photo courtesy Datawind
The Indian government hopes to distribute at least 220 million Aakash 2 tablets to that country’s students. Manufactured in India for a mere $40, the purchase cost to students will be subsidized to further increase access.

Although many consumers still primarily
purchase devices designed, developed and marketed by large companies...this may not be the case going forward. If current patterns hold true, consumers around the world may increasingly be just as likely to own devices developed by smaller brands and manufactured through any number of “other” manufacturers. Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2Q13 Apple 14% Samsung 32% LG 5% ZTE 4% Lenovo 4% Others 40%

A relatively common customization might
be the installation of an alternate app to control text input. This new app could be triggered just-in-time, or set to completely replace the default keyboard. SwiftKey with QWERTY and gesture input 8Pen gesture input

In fact, thanks to a
system called intents, users can also specify favourite apps to complete common tasks such as sharing or opening URLs. They can do this just-in-time, or choose a favourite app to complete that task going forward. Set as default: Choose Firefox as default app to browse the web from the current context. Just in time: Choose which app you would currently like to use to “Share” a URL.

A less common, but more
transformative customization is to install a new launcher. This replaces the device’s home and lock screens, core app menus, and often unlocks extensive collections of themes and home screen widgets. The very popular Go Launcher oﬀers an extensive theme collection and enables users to customize transition eﬀects and deﬁne their own shortcut gestures.

The most extreme form of
customization involves completely replacing the build of Android that came with the device. These third party (and often community-built) modiﬁcations (or MODs) provide not just a new launcher, skins, and themes, but replace many default apps and enable entirely new (and often experimental) features.

Paranoid Android MOD for example
features a Hybrid Mode that lets you adjust the resolution of every app, widget or system component on the device. Because many Android apps adapt to diﬀerent screen sizes, this enables you to choose a preferred “view” for each app.

The most popular MOD in
China is MIUI, developed by upstart handset manufacturer Xiaomi. International versions of MIUI are maintained by independent developers with versions available for 14 countries including Brazil, India and Indonesia. (The MIUI is closed source, so it may be in breach of the Android licence.)

Installing a MOD is far
from mainstream (especially in Europe and North America), but as installation becomes simpler, who knows what behaviours will develop. CyanogenMod is now a formal company with $7M in investment, and plans to develop a one-click installer that will soon be available on Google Play.

Although a device’s core interfaces,
icons and even input mechanisms may be customized, manufacturers are expected* to include the default Holo system theme on every device. *This requirement only extends to “oﬃcial” manufacturers who ship devices with Android Marketplace. Small manufacturers don’t always qualify, so although they have nothing to gain, (and everything to lose) by not including Holo, it’s possible they may choose to omit it. Holo lightHolo dark

Holo provides a consistent look
and feel for core components. When designing an Android app, you are free to provide your own theme, but using Holo will guarantee a consistent look across devices, and reduce the need to extensively test your brand- speciﬁc theme with the many other themed variants of Android. Thanks to Holo, the Twitter image picker interface remains consistent. The Holo-themed settings screen on a Galaxy Nexus running stock-Android. The customized settings screen on a Xiaomi M2S running MiUI.

What you will need to
plan for however is diversity in platform versions. Because Android OS is itself just another component, manufacturers are free to use whichever version best suits a device’s overall capabilities and performance proﬁle. (And if a manufacturer has highly customized their build, they may not be able to immediately update it each time Google releases a new version). Jelly Bean (2012) 45.1% Ice Cream Sandwich (2011) 21.7% Gingerbread (2010) 30.7% Older versions 2.5% Source: developer.android.com, September 4 2013

Note: Older versions of Android
often support diﬀerent features, include diﬀerent APIs and follow diﬀerent design patterns. Google provides compatibility and support libraries that help smooth out many of these diﬀerences. Android 4.0 £7,000 ($11,000) Vertu Ti For this reason, consumers purchasing a device today may not automatically end up with the latest version of the OS.

Source: Henry Fong, Yodo1, presented
at GDC 2013 Users may also not access their content through the channels you’d expect... A snapshot of the complexity of Android app discovery, distribution and payment in China. The Chinese ecosystem is particularly complex and include over 200 app stores.

An unoﬃcial app store in
a Bangkok mega mall selling Android (and iOS :-) apps to passersby. We’ve been told that in parts of APAC, stores like this can also help you install and maintain a custom Android MOD. FWIW: This is not a new behaviour. The platforms and devices may have changed but we ﬁrst noticed (J2ME, SWF & ringtone) app store booths in APAC malls in 2002! the more creative people will get the more open the ecosystem, social discovery serendipity (...and fun!) curation and tech support

“We have seen 11,868 distinct
devices download our app in the past few months. In our report last year we saw 3,997. OpenSignal device fragmentation report, 2013 With so many distinctly diﬀerent devices, you can expect a wide range of screen sizes and pixel densities.

Screen size and pixel density
diversity makes deﬁning layouts using pixels problematic. On screens with diﬀerent densities, an identical number of pixels, will correspond to diﬀerent physical sizes. this 4 x 2 pixel button is too big on a low density display... ...just right on a medium density display... ...and far too small on a high density display

To solve this problem, Android
enables you to deﬁne layouts using density independent pixels (dp). Use these virtual pixel units to express dimensions or position, and the system will automatically scale them as appropriate to the device’s screen size and density. medium density (baseline) high density (adjusted so physical size remains consistent) low density (adjusted so physical size remains consistent) Tip: 1dp corresponds to approximately 1px on a 160ppi display.

Similar to designing ﬂexibly for
the web, you should don’t specify dimensions in cases where elements are simply meant to stretch to ﬁll the available space. Android enables you to specify how components should scale to ﬁt this space, and ways to deﬁne the weight of each component within the interface. resizable area, no ﬁxed height resizable and of equal weight 12dp10dp 48dp 48dp 32x32dp Source: developer.google.com

Layouts that scale and ﬂex
are great, but to provide the best experience, you will often need to go further: • Provide alternate bitmaps to reduce the blurring and pixelation caused by automatic scaling. • Specify alternate layouts to improve legibility and overall user experience. • Specify alternate content or behaviours to suit a user’s language, device form factor or capabilities. but that’s not all...

Each Android app includes a
collection of resources that are used to deﬁne and construct the user interface. These include bitmap images, layouts, colour palettes, text strings and numeric values containing content or key dimensions such as global or component-speciﬁc margins and font sizes. <abcd/> <200dp>

Resources can be grouped using
qualiﬁers that specify their intended context of use. Similar (in spirit) to CSS media queries (but far more versatile)...this system enables you to indicate which resources should be used based on common contexts such as screen size, orientation, pixel density, and language. color drawable drawable-mhdpi res drawable-port-hdpi layout values values-de orientation pixel density language

values-de All you have to
do is group assets using the necessary resources and qualiﬁers. At runtime, Android will detect the current device capabilities and load the appropriate resources for your application. color drawable res values logo.png icon.png drawable-hdpi logo.png icon.png only high dpi devices will use these images only devices set to German will use what’s in this folder

A critical use-case for qualiﬁers
is to specify alternate bitmaps for diﬀerent screen densities. These are speciﬁed using standard groupings (called generalized densities) that map to common Android screen densities. nodpi can be used to specify for bitmap resources that should not be scaled to match the device density. Although still rare, you can also use tvdpi to specify bitmaps for mid-density (~213dpi) televisions. ldpi ~120dpi mdpi ~160dpi hdpi ~240dpi xhdpi ~320dpi xxhdpi ~480dpi BASELINE 0.75x 1.5x 2.0x 3.0x

Creating layouts that are ﬂexible,
and adapt to diﬀerent screen densities, isn’t always enough to deliver the best experience. excessive line length missed opportunity to use space reduced visual grouping

Android provides two additional tools
that dramatically improve the experience when dealing with screen size diversity. layout layout-sw480dp layout-sw720dp res A way to specify alternate layouts using qualiﬁers to correlate layouts with screen size breakpoints. A way to construct layouts using reusable and adaptable user interface components called fragments. layout-land-w900dp

Using qualiﬁers, you can deﬁne
breakpoints between layouts, or tweak existing layouts to better suit the screen size. 600dp 720dp320dp 1020dp baseline experience and onwards...

Android apps are made up
of activities (things you can do) and fragments (components that provide the content and functionality within each activity). fragment(s) fragment(s) fragment(s)

On small screens, it’s always
best to focus the interaction. There's often only room to display one fragment at a time, so users must drill-down to access other fragments or activities.

On larger screens, there is
an opportunity to combine these fragments to enrich interactions, improve usability, and make better use of available space. 12:00 12:00 A B A B

A B C On the
largest screens Evernote combines up to three fragments into one activity. Swipe left on fragment B to reveal a split screen containing fragments B and C. Swipe left on C to reveal a full-screen view of that fragment.

Evernote also relies heavily on
ﬂexible components, and lots of fragment-speciﬁc design tweaks. It’s this combination of design decisions that enables a consistently great experience. linear layout fragments expand to ﬁll the screen grid layout grid scales vertically and horizontallyfragment with larger thumbnail

The list and detail fragments
as one activity. Swipe right to slide open the menu panel fragment. The menu panel, list and detail fragments as one activity. Wordpress app One fragment per activity. Swipe right to slide open the menu panel fragment.

Touch screen UI mode API
level notouch stylus trackball ﬁnger car desk television appliance v1 v2 v3 Layout direction Language & region MCC & MNC ldrtl ldltr en fr en-rUS fr-rFR mcc310 loosely maps to platform version e.g. Gingerbread, Jelly Bean country code mnc004 docked with a... no display!! network code e.g. AT&T, T-Mobile right to left And that’s just the start of what you can do. Qualiﬁers can be also used to specify a wide range of alternate experiences. (Here are just a few of the more interesting ones...) For a full list see Providing resources

Almost any application will beneﬁt
from the inclusion of alternate resources to support diversity (be they images, layouts, content or behaviours). It’s not necessary however to account for all combinations. TIP

Small well-chosen adjustments can make
a big diﬀerence. When in doubt, keep things simple. Don’t micro-manage the design or introduce complexity just “because you can”. layout-en-rUS-land-car-hdpi-night-qwerty-trackball-...

An intent is simply a
combination of an action, and a piece of data. Source: Nick Butcher, Google VIEW EDIT Contact “Bryan Rieger” www.yiibu.com

Android apps can register their
ability to handle each type of intent (or if you prefer...their ability to assist the user in completing an activity). I can.... ...VIEW ...EDIT ...SHARE ...CHOOSE “ Source: Nick Butcher, Google

On other platforms, a brand
decides (ahem...guesses, presumes) which services to enable, and hard codes these into their app. (Or...if a user is lucky, the platform may enable them to pre-conﬁgure a few popular default services such as Facebook and Twitter.)

...thanks to intents, users can
choose how they wish to share. you “save” you edit/compose your noteyou click “share” SHARE {data} Share you choose an app*the intent is broadcast *only apps that are capable of fulﬁlling a share request are displayed

you “save” you edit/compose your
noteyou click “share” the intent is broadcast SHARE {data} ...completing the action automatically brings you back to the Twitter app Intents also enable out-of-the-box seamless experiences. Once a task is complete, the user automatically ends up back where they initiated that task. Share *only apps that are capable of fulﬁlling a share request are displayed you choose an app*

Clicking a URL also triggers
an intent. It’s therefore possible for brands with both an app, and a mobile optimized site to enable behaviours like this.... Pick me!! Two apps respond “I can handle ”view” intents on amazon.co.uk” browser resolves the URL app resolves the URL*the user clicks a link (within a web page, in an email, or in another app...) <a href=”http:// www.amazon.co.uk/ bookReference”> the intent is broadcast VIEW {URI} Share Amazon Chrome *this doesn’t happen by magic, but the additional work is worth it!

The beauty here is that
this is a (progressive) enhancement. The web page simply contains a URL. If there’s no Amazon app installed, the URL simply opens in a browser. (If the user has two browsers installed (for example, a text to speech browser), and hasn’t designated a default, both will respond...and the user can make a choice). Reminder:

The more apps support intents,
the more users can chain apps and activities together to complete very personal experiences... Share (i.e. open) using Google Translate ...then Share in an SMS hardware Back open Tweet using your chosen “app” click a URL in the Tweet and open using your favourite “app” seamless auto Back seamless auto Back hardware Back For a deeper exploration of multi-app experiences, see Beyond Progressive Enhancement

Using intents reduces the need
to design, build, and maintain a bespoke system to manage sharing, or build regional variants of your app to enable region- or audience- speciﬁc social sharing. It also enables your app to deliver a more personalized and future-friendly user experience. CORE BENEFITS

Be ﬂexible Create density-independent layouts
that stretch and compress to accommodate various heights and widths. Provide assets for all Provide resources for diﬀerent screen densities to ensure that your app looks great on any device. Take advantage of built-in resource switching to optimize other aspects of the experience. Optimize layouts On larger devices, take advantage of extra screen real estate. Create compound views to reveal more content and ease navigation. Enable diverse experiences Enable personalization, and provide a more global experience using intents. recap: four key principles First three principles provided by Google but expanded by yiibu..

and once we begin to
embed swarms of Android-tethered “smart dust” throughout the world, we may lose count altogether... Source: MIT Technology Review, smart dust mage: UCLA “By equipping the clothing and bodies of users with a mesh of multiple sensors - known as “smart dust” - that report to an Android-powered phone, researchers are pioneering an open-source route to realizing the dream of always-on medical monitoring”.

meet an open and widely-distributed
“Because Android is open-source, the researchers were able to develop on top of it using the SPINE platform for remote sensing, and to add to it their own API...these platforms allowed them free reign to experiment”. - Android powered sensors monitor vital signs platform... http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/andrewmalone/2355592191 “I ran into [SAIC] at this trade show where they were placed next to all these other carmakers with massive software teams...they said: ‘We just have six dudes and Android.’ - The Internet of things is Android and its everywhere “Nanosats based on Android phones oﬀerthe...advantage of a standardized appplatform for running experiments. Thisopens up space experiments to studentsand hackers around the world.’ - Android and Linux Nanosats shine bright